The drones just travel around the ocean scanning for illegal fishing. When they detect it, they determine who owns the vessel and send them a bill for fines. People respond to fines.
People are free to ignore the fine. The country they live in won't enforce it, especially since the illegal fishing is often occurring in another country's waters. In many cases, it is tacitly encouraged by the home country.
We can already detect illegal fishing, that's not a limitation. Illegal fishing fleets greatly out-scale the ability of naval forces to seize them, so the occasional seizure is just a cost of doing business, like with illegal drugs. There is little that will be effective at stopping illegal fishing short of using naval forces to sink them (which would scale), and that isn't going to happen.
I think we're talking about different scenarios. What I'm considering is a scenario where some type of enforcement authority for illegal fishing is considering whether drones are a good solution. My answer is yes. However, I am aware that no such authority exists at present because the illegal fishing is not actually illegal under any globally recognized laws.
My larger point in the GP is that you don't need to threaten anybody with force to get them to comply with a (hypothetical, future) law or treaty like this. The people doing this fishing are operating businesses, and if you make it costly for them to operate a certain way, they will change how they are operating to become compliant. This occurs all the time in other industries, so I don't see why fishing would be different.
No, this is overblown.
The drones just travel around the ocean scanning for illegal fishing. When they detect it, they determine who owns the vessel and send them a bill for fines. People respond to fines.
People are free to ignore the fine. The country they live in won't enforce it, especially since the illegal fishing is often occurring in another country's waters. In many cases, it is tacitly encouraged by the home country.
We can already detect illegal fishing, that's not a limitation. Illegal fishing fleets greatly out-scale the ability of naval forces to seize them, so the occasional seizure is just a cost of doing business, like with illegal drugs. There is little that will be effective at stopping illegal fishing short of using naval forces to sink them (which would scale), and that isn't going to happen.
I think we're talking about different scenarios. What I'm considering is a scenario where some type of enforcement authority for illegal fishing is considering whether drones are a good solution. My answer is yes. However, I am aware that no such authority exists at present because the illegal fishing is not actually illegal under any globally recognized laws.
My larger point in the GP is that you don't need to threaten anybody with force to get them to comply with a (hypothetical, future) law or treaty like this. The people doing this fishing are operating businesses, and if you make it costly for them to operate a certain way, they will change how they are operating to become compliant. This occurs all the time in other industries, so I don't see why fishing would be different.
You think these people give a shit about fines?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/21/such-brutality...